The Learning Myth: Anyone can Be/Learn Anything

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes
Overloaded - I'm sorry to say I do not know the original source of this image. The copy I have was downloaded in July 2004.

Overloaded – I’m sorry to say I do not know the original source of this image. The copy I have was downloaded in July 2004.

When you say that all you need to do to succeed is to try, and they fail, the implication is they simply aren’t trying hard enough. That’s not good.

Not everyone is a genius. Really. And there is no evidence that the oft-repeated quote about tree-climbing and fish attributed to Einstein was ever said by Einstein. The first known reference to this quote comes from a self-help book (and we all know how careful self-help books are when it comes to making sure all their information is true and valid).

There is some value in the idea that we should praise effort – but note that this should not be conflated with grades in courses. Unless you are explicitly looking to assess effort rather than achievement, do NOT give marks for effort. But by all means, let them try more than once (one of the many reasons why tests are usually misguided).

I agree with Sal Khan that encouraging a growth mindset is a good idea. It’s a part of what I facilitate with my gamified course design. BUT, while it is true that intelligence is not fixed, I do not believe that there is no ceiling. There really is. We absolutely should be encouraging everyone to develop their thinking skills (as well as all other talents), but to imply that everyone can reach the same level of greatness in anything they set their minds to is just plain mean.

It’s the same kind of mindset that ends up assuming people who are down on their luck must simply not be trying hard enough.

The Learning Myth: Why I’ll Never Tell My Son He’s Smart | Khan Academy.

My 5-year-­old son has just started reading. Every night, we lie on his bed and he reads a short book to me. Inevitably, he’ll hit a word that he has trouble with: last night the word was “gratefully.” He eventually got it after a fairly painful minute. He then said, “Dad, aren’t you glad how I struggled with that word? I think I could feel my brain growing.” I smiled: my son was now verbalizing the tell­-tale signs of a “growth­ mindset.” But this wasn’t by accident. Recently, I put into practice research I had been reading about for the past few years: I decided to praise my son not when he succeeded at things he was already good at, but when he persevered with things that he found difficult. I stressed to him that by struggling, your brain grows. Between the deep body of research on the field of learning mindsets and this personal experience with my son, I am more convinced than ever that mindsets toward learning could matter more than anything else we teach.

Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones.

image

What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail.

However, not everyone realizes this. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that people are either smart or not, that intelligence is fixed by genes. People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be grown through effort, struggle and failure. Dweck found that those with a fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle, which limited their learning. People with a growth mindset, however, embraced challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning outcomes. As you can imagine, this correlated with the latter group more actively pushing themselves and growing intellectually.

Here’s the rub: Individuals do indeed have limits to their abilities, but we have no way of determining what those limits are. That means that the idea of a growth mindset is a good one and should be embraced, but we also need to acknowledge that we may reach the limits of our growth in any given endeavor, and it’s important to be OK with that. The really hard part is figuring out when that limit has been reached. How can we know that we’re at our limit; that no new approach is going to help us advance our abilities? Well, I don’t think we ever can.

So then the question becomes, how long do we keep encouraging learners to try when they are making no more progress?

That’s a tough one.

5 people like this post.

Unlike

The 2014 ESA Essential Facts is Out

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf

HACKR118A few of the highlights that stood out for me:

  • Women and men are roughly equal in terms of who plays (though they do tend to play different games).
  • Gameplay on smartphones and mobile devices is on the rise.
  • The average age of gamers is marching right along with the time: it is now 31, with a fairly even split between the under 18s, the 18-35s, and the over 35s.
  • About 2/5 say they get better value for their money from games than other media (DVD, music, movies).
  • The most popular online games are casual and puzzle games  (58%).
  • These are also the most popular mobile games (77%).
  • Parental involvement is high, with >85% parents reporting that they are aware of the ESRB rating system, and that they oversee and control what their kids play, as well as how much they play.
  • Not surprisingly, action and shooter games are still the most popular console genres, but strategy and casual games are the most popular computer game genres.

As for which games were most popular? It’s nice to see the number of E-rated games is still high, and amusing to note that the Sims remains the most popular computer game franchise.

snap01605

snap01606

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Help Joy help you. On the unusability of internal systems. – disambiguity

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

Yup. No-one wants to use your software – they merely want to get their work done. When will software designers realize, that they are NOT the experts when it comes to design? Usability is one of the few areas where the customer is indeed always right. Granted, a few seem to get it, but most still seem to think that since they are the tech experts, they somehow know how to do everyone’s job – and they never seem to tire of telling them they’re doing it wrong.

And yet, all the time, we say ‘It does’t matter, we’ll sort that out with training’, ‘Call the tech writers, we’ll make a manual for this system’, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll inflict this piece of crap on our employees, unlike our customers they’re stuck with us’.

via Help Joy help you. On the unusability of internal systems. – disambiguity.

 

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition – this applies in any kind of UX design:

The Lessons

  1. Usability Means…

    Usability means making sure something works well, and that a person of average ability or experience can use it for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.

  2. Web applications should explain themselves.

    As far as humanly possible, when I look at a web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

  3. Don’t Make Me Think

    As a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. If people who build a site don’t care enough to make things obvious it can erode confidence in the site and its publishers.

  4. Don’t waste my time

    Much of our web use is motivated by the desire to save time. As a result, web users tend to act like sharks. They have to keep moving or they’ll die.

  5. Users still cling to their back buttons

    There’s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong. Unlike firefighting, the penalty for guessing wrong on a website is just a click or two of the back button. The back button is the most-used feature of web browsers.

  6. We’re creatures of habit

    If we find something that works, we stick to it. Once we find something that works — no matter how badly — we tend not to look for a better way. We’ll use a better way if we stumble across one, but we seldom look for one.

  7. No Time for Small Talk

    Happy talk is like small talk – content free, basically just a way to be sociable. But most Web users don’t have time for small talk; they want to get right to the beef. You can – and should – eliminate as much happy talk as possible.

  8. Don’t lose search

    Some people (search-dominant users), will almost always look for a search box as they enter a site. These may be the same people who look for the nearest clerk as soon as they enter a store.

  9. We form mental site-maps

    When we return to something on a Web site, instead of replying on a physical sense of where it is, we have to remember where it is in the conceptual hierarchy and retrace our steps.

  10. Make it easy to go home

    Having a home button in sight at all times offers reassurance that no matter how lost I may get, I can always start over, like pressing a Reset button or using a “Get out of Jail free” card.

 

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Creative Random Word Generator

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

OK, now this has some fun applications…..

2009-09-24_07-55-58Creative Random Word Generator

Click a button above to generate a set of random words.

Use the random word generator to generate between 1 and 8 random words. Use the idea visualisation features to inspire creative thinking.

Join the growing number of people using this awesome tool to :

Brainstorm (use the words as stimulus for ideas)
Play creativity games similar to those you’ll find in our Games Section
Cure for writer’s block
Creative writing prompts
Play Pictionary and other word based games
Anything else you can think of …

I think we should use it to add chaff to social sites (like FaceBook) who routinely mine what we say in order to serve us advertising.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Course Design is Scholarly Work and Deserves Attribution

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

My course websites used to be public, but I got tired of others taking my design work w/o permission or attribution. Now most of my courses are password protected. examples I hadn’t really thought about my syllabi until last year when I designed and taught a particularly novel course. It’s a gamified design and is largely a culmination of my own 35 years of experience in teaching as well as the kind of design that Charles Reigeluth talks about when he talks about a paradigm change in education. I started thinking about my syllabi and the course designs they describe as scholarly work worthy of attribution. I have a growing number of publications that come from the novel aspects of the design of this course. I was annoyed when I discovered that the person who taught the course after me took many aspects of my design without any mention of where they came from. I have long included attributions on my syllabi and assignment specifications to credit those whose ideas I built upon. Apparently, this is not common, and that’s wrong. It’s especially annoying when faculty in Education fail to acknowledge the colleagues and scholars upon whose work they are building, yet I’ve seen that done more times than I can count. I’ve had elements of my own designs “borrowed” without either permission or attribution. You’d think that professors of education of all people should recognize that course design is scholarly work. These are the same people who insist on proper reference style on almost everything their students submit, claiming that proper attribution is an important part of ethical professional practice. Apparently, ethical professional practice only applies to *some* people and *some* scholarly work. getting-a-degreeOnce again, it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one who thinks this is an issue: Citing Syllabi – ProfHacker – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

I thinkDerek Bruff puts it very well in a comment on George’s posting: “The acknowledgement issue is a delicate one. We have standard ways to acknowledge the research and scholarship done by others (citations and such), but we don’t have any standards or norms around attribution of teaching materials or methodologies. I kind of wish we did, since giving credit where credit is due (a) is generally an ethical thing to do and (b) might result in better institutional recognition of contributions to the teaching profession.” A similar discussion is found in the comments to Brian’s post on Forking your Syllabus. Katherine D. Harris has discussed the issue of Acknowledgments on Syllabi in a nice posting which also highlights the many different ways we can learn from these pedagogical gold nuggets. As she points out, with examples, a growing number of online syllabi do include an acknowledgements section. I will be adding some to my own courses as I revise and create new ones this year.

Here are a few of Konrad Lawson‘s suggestions:

  • When you write your syllabus, include the year and semester it was taught. This can serve as a version number, and will allow different versions to be acknowledged accordingly.
  • Consider uploading your syllabus somewhere relatively stable online, to reduce the chances of link rot or keep versions alive online where search engines can find them. Upload, for example, to archive.org or to github.com, or somewhere your university it unlikely to take it down. Remember LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).
  • Consider adding a Creative Commons or other open license to your syllabus somewhere explicitly so that, beyond “fair use” and the un-copyrightable nature of ideas, others can feel comfortable adopting and modifying (with attribution) larger chunks of, say, your assignment descriptions or class policies.
  • Consider putting the above info in a convenient meta-data section at the bottom of your syllabus so that it can be easily found, or as an additional file alongside it if it is in a repository (for example, on github). Hopefully, if this catches on, it might further facilitate the kind of larger scale work by projects such as the Open Syllabus Project. Other useful metadata to include there might be some keywords related to your course, its level of difficulty, the expected size of the class, whether it is a lecture, seminar, etc. course, and other basic info that might found elsewhere throughout the syllabus such as the instructor, university, course title, and version.
  • As sharing of syllabi becomes more common, we will be more conscious of “other readers” beyond our students of the document. One question those readers will often ask themselves, as they decide whether they want to adopt some of your readings, policies, or assignment types, or other material is: did it work? What worked well, and what needed more refinement? The answer to these questions can sometimes be detected in the changes from one syllabus to the next when multiple years are available, but a “changelog” of some kind indicating what bugs were fixed and new features added can be useful, even if, like the “changelog” of computer code, it is just a quick list of bullet points.
  • When acknowledging other syllabi, be specific, and if a digital version of your syllabi exists, include a link (but also enough words from the title and year to enable a targeted search if the link no longer works).
1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Students drop a bomb at the #gafesummit Vancouver: “We don’t like rubrics.” | A Stick in the Sand

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 3 minutes

Do students really like rubrics? Are YOU using them right?

CH043082Students drop a bomb at the #gafesummit Vancouver: “We don’t like rubrics.” | A Stick in the Sand.

For my part I quite like rubrics, but I also think many, if not most teachers create unrealistic rubrics.

Grant Wiggins (of Understanding by Design fame, among other things) has written some must-read posts about rubrics.

Consider how a valid rubric is born. It summarizes what a range of concrete works looks like as reflections of a complex performance goal. Note two key words: complex and summarizes. All complex performance evaluation requires a judgment of quality in terms of one or more criteria, whether we are considering essays, diving, or wine. The rubric is a summary that generalizes from lots and lots of samples (sometimes called models, exemplars, or anchors) across the range of quality, in response to a performance demand. The rubric thus serves as a quick reminder of what all the specific samples of work look like across a range of quality.

The place where I see many (if not most) rubrics falling down is that they don’t actually summarize lots and lots of samples.

Now, I can create a pretty good rubric for a programming assignment, but that’s because I’ve seen 1000’s of programming assignments. In order to be able to describe the various levels of achievement in a piece of work, you have to have seen a very large number of samples of that particular work.

I can’t speak for K-12, but I can say that education faculties LOVE rubrics, and when I teach a course in an education faculty, I am usually to produce rubrics for every single “learning task” I create – even if it’s a brand new task. To me this reveals a lack of understanding of what rubrics are and how they should be used. How can I possibly know what exemplary looks like if I have never seen any examples? Well, the answer is I can’t. What I can do (which is what most teachers do when they are creating rubrics) is to invent a wish list of things we want to see. That’s not a rubric. That’s a wish list.

Here’s an example of what I do now:

COMP1103 Player Stats 2014 2.10

While this has many of the same ideas as are intended with a rubric, it allows for a great deal more flexibility – especially since I add comments on each of the categories.

Update: April 26, 2019

The original webpage that prompted this post appears to be gone, so i have taken the liberty of repeating it here (thanks to the WayBack Machine)

Students drop a bomb at the #gafesummit Vancouver: “We don’t like rubrics.”

On May 8, 2014 by Braddo With 11 Comments – Education

Update: Here’s a Storify story with as much of the conversation on Twitter as I can capture:

rubrics

student’s note from the panel discussion

This year we assembled a panel of students at the Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Vancouver Summit we hosted at Mulgrave School. The thinking was, it’s about time we talked to our customers, so to speak.

We had 5 high school students students from three local schools sitting round the table blue-sky-ing the future school. I’ll be posting more of their thoughts later but I thought I’d start with this bomb: the students hate rubrics!

Rubrics are the bread and butter of assessment these days. The IB Diploma program, for example, depends on them. One student did say that on the upside, rubrics provide some security against teacher bias (real or perceived.) But, all of the kids said, rubrics feel too standardized: “We want something more personal than a number or letter that refers to some canned comment.”

Good rubrics are built by students and teachers, collaboratively, so this comment from the kids might mean we’re not doing a good enough job consulting the major stakeholders in the assessment. My sense was, however, that this was not the problem and that students were touching on something much deeper. As Yong Zhao said in the summit keynote, so long as outcomes–whether employable skills or university entrance requirements–are prescribed by an external body, schooling becomes an exercise in squeezing all students through the “sausage-making machine.” It’s an impersonal activity, by definition, because in this structure we are not cultivating personal talents but rather bending and shaping people to meet some externally determined standard.

Zhao keynote

 

For an outstanding example of what cultivating talent looks like, watch this video of Benjamin Zander teaching a 15-year old student to play cello. It remains the best teaching I’ve  seen. “You can give an “A” to anybody,” says Zander. Listen to him explain what great teaching and assessment look like at about 5:45 on.

I recall reading somewhere of a study that suggested that rubrics did not actual provide any more objectivity or consistency that good teacher judgement: the same student essays were given to two different groups of teachers with one group using a rubric and the second, their good judgement. The study reported no statistically significant difference in the scoring. If anyone can get their hands on this or similar research I’d be grateful.

Also, five students are admittedly a ridiculous small sample size. I think I need to at least send out a quick poll to increase the numbers and draw on a more representative sample.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

The Power of a Nudge?

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

lithium.com nudge 1I’ve been working on my talk for the EdTechTeam Calgary Summit featuring Google for Education (#gafesummit) and I’ve had a couple of AHA moments regarding gamification.

  1. I hate feeling like I’m being manipulated – and this seems to be a big part of what “driving behavior” is about in gamification.
  2. I don’t have a problem with badges per se; the issue I have is with badges (or any kind of “reward” really) that represent minutia.

The Power of a Nudge—Part 1: A Stronger Behavior D… – Lithium Community.

On Manipulation:

I know some people say they don’t care – some even like it. Turns out these are probably the extroverts – they are more easily driven through external motivation and introverts are more driven through internal motivation.

Extroverts Brain: Scientists Find Their Processing Of Reward Differs From Introverts

Presumably then, the bulk of the gamification being implemented in business is targeted at extroverts. Apparently about 1 in 4 people are introverts, so this means that these tactics will fail to work for about 25% of the population. If these tactics are used in your business on your own employees, there is even the possibility that you will drive the introverts out. This can be a problem because there is a link between introversion and creativity. Do you really want to distance this group of people?

In a way, manipulation involves providing the appearance of choice without actually providing genuine choice. This gets at the core of the kind of gamification I’ve been doing – my Practical Gamification is really all about providing genuine CHOICE.

On Meaningless Badges:

 I’ve talked about badges before. Like I said above I don’t have a problem with badges per se, my issue is with badges or stickers, or, prizes, ….)  that are given out for minutia. These sorts of badges can actually drive people away. I went to a conference some years ago that had gamified their conference registration / scheduling system. I got badges for the lamest things – like registering. EVERYONE who registered (which was, everyone going to the conference) “won” this badge, so it was meaningless. I felt no sense of accomplishment for most of the badges I had “earned”. Eventually, I ended up avoiding doing things because I didn’t want to get another one of those dumb badges.

Badges are fine if they commemorate something real, but some people are actually turned off (introverts again?) by trifling praise and recognition. Not everyone is interested in showing off their accomplishments. Turns out that what is “normal” for Americans is often not normal for anyone else in the world.

 Choose metaphors carefully.

UHC2-2013-12-10_14-09-38_wmOh, and by the way, most critters would move to the high ground if placed on an uneven surface. I find it amusing that the metaphor meant to illustrate a “nudge” would actually fail – in fact it would have the exact opposite effect. It’s natural and they all do it. When I am trying to pose my rabbits for pictures and they are leaning to one side, I can usually get them to straighten out by gently pushing them in the direction they are already leaning. They will almost always lean into my hand rather than away from it.

If you’re going to use animals to illustrate a point, make sure you actually understand them.

 

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). The creative personality. Psychology Today, 29(4), 36-40.

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Academics Anonymous: an open letter to university ‘leaders’

Posted on by
1
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

OFFIC060Academics Anonymous: an open letter to university ‘leaders’ | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

I LOVE this. Attention University of Calgary – especially the VPs, Deans, Assoc. Deans,….

It takes more than saying you’re great. Clearly you are good at branding and crafting messages. If you ask me, it takes respect, honesty, and integrity. In those areas, you have a very long way to go.

 

“Dear leaders,

I address you as “leaders” because, for some reason (perhaps manager comes too close to rhyming with janitor for your liking), you’ve increasingly taken to styling yourselves in this way. How grand. How imposing. How spurious.

Leaders are followed. The capacity and willingness to drive people along with the use of the pitchfork of threatened redundancy or the flaming torch of disciplinary action does not make a leader and the mere fact that you so brazenly call yourselves leaders is evidence of the malaise that prompts me to write.

For the record, if you’re not Alexander, Napoleon, Monty or the modern equivalent you’re not really a leader. Be neither managers nor leaders. Be provosts, masters, principals, vice-chancellors, rectors, deans, registrars, bursars. How quaint. How medieval. How refreshing.”

…..

“Dictators (elected or not) always ignore everyone who’s not a member of the ruling clique. You’re not collegial just because you go around addressing people as colleagues all the time. Actually, there’s an inverse relationship. The more you say it, the more you show that you don’t really believe it. You simply want secure fiefdoms for the members of your cliques at the expense of making others into vassals with even fewer rights than hitherto.

Everything is directed towards that end. You break your own rules and make it up as you go along to suit yourselves. There is no genuine collegiality, no trust, no sense of equality in a republic of ideas.

So, whether you’re elected leaders (as in older universities such as mine) or appointed, your currency is the same: ill-conceived change to entrench the interests of your cliques and for the sake of being seen to do something. It’s a simple truth, but lost on people who “lead”, that all progress requires change but not all change constitutes progress. There is such a thing as change for the worse and that’s what you’re presiding over. Take three examples:

• Instead of standing up for the idea of the university against the league tablers you prefer riding the tail of that tiger – taking the credit when an institution’s on the up and making sure we catch the blame when it’s falling.

• Seemingly, there’s never enough money… except when there’s more for new administrative staff: courtiers for the ruling clique.

• And, of course, there’s money to pay for rebranding. (But don’t you realise that the only thing any branding consultant ever sells is him- or herself? They persuade the shallow-minded to think in their terms and sell the idea that they can unerringly influence others as well.)”

Be the first to like.

Unlike